]]>Rabbi Jonathan Sacks retired after serving 22 years as the Chief Rabbi for the United Kingdom. He is teaching in the US this year and leading a global religious response to religious violence. Interviewed at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City.

]]>St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Lower Manhattan was crushed by the falling Twin Towers during the terrorist attacks on 9/11. On October 18, the site for the future church, a national shrine, was dedicated by leaders of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2014/10/24/october-24-2014-ground-zero-church-will-rebuild/24437/feed/4Greek Orthodox,Ground Zero,September 11,World Trade CenterThe new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, set to be rebuilt at the World Trade Center, will be a national shrine and will include a nondenominational bereavement center. "Next to the place where the most tragic thing that has ever happened on America...The new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, set to be rebuilt at the World Trade Center, will be a national shrine and will include a nondenominational bereavement center. "Next to the place where the most tragic thing that has ever happened on American soil," says Father Evagoras Constantinides of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, "it needs to be a place to offer, to welcome, to open, and to accept all sorts of people."Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno2:30 World Without Hatehttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2014/09/05/september-5-2014-world-without-hate/24026/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2014/09/05/september-5-2014-world-without-hate/24026/#commentsFri, 05 Sep 2014 13:00:26 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=24026More →

]]>Days after 9/11, Rais Bhuiyan was shot in the head by Mark Stroman in a hate crime targeted at Arabs. Bhuiyan survived the attack, and Stroman was sentenced to death, but Bhuiyan felt compelled by God to show love and compassion for his assailant. Bhuiyan forgave Stroman many times, even seconds before his execution, and says he believes he saw a change in the man that once tried to kill him. Now he has made teaching mercy and forgiveness his life’s work.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2014/09/05/september-5-2014-world-without-hate/24026/feed/7Forgiveness,Hate Crimes,Racism,reconciliation,September 11,terrorist attacksDays after 9/11, Rais Bhuiyan was shot in the head by Mark Stroman in a hate crime targeted at Arabs. Bhuiyan survived the attack, and Stroman was sentenced to death, but Bhuiyan felt compelled to not let the story end there.Days after 9/11, Rais Bhuiyan was shot in the head by Mark Stroman in a hate crime targeted at Arabs. Bhuiyan survived the attack, and Stroman was sentenced to death, but Bhuiyan felt compelled to not let the story end there. "I need to forgive him in public and do something to save the life," says Bhuiyan, "because if Mark Stroman was given the chance I had in my childhood, he would have become a different person.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno8:23 Valarie Kaur Extended Interviewhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/07/26/july-26-2013-valarie-kaur-extended-interview/19440/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/07/26/july-26-2013-valarie-kaur-extended-interview/19440/#commentsFri, 26 Jul 2013 17:10:06 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=19440More →

]]>“In more than 100 years of living and working in this country it was the first time the Sikh community entered national attention. It was the first time we stood in the national spotlight. It took a butchering for it to happen but it was a moment when the kind of love and support that was expressed was something that made Sikhs feel like they too were seen as fellow Americans.” Watch more of our interview with Valarie Kaur, a Sikh activist and founding director of Groundswell.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/07/26/july-26-2013-valarie-kaur-extended-interview/19440/feed/3civil rights,gun violence,Hate Crimes,Oak Creek,Racism,Religious Minority,September 11,Sikh"In more than 100 years of living and working in this country it was the first time the Sikh community entered national attention. It was the first time we stood in the national spotlight. It took a butchering for it to happen but it was a moment when ..."In more than 100 years of living and working in this country it was the first time the Sikh community entered national attention. It was the first time we stood in the national spotlight. It took a butchering for it to happen but it was a moment when the kind of love and support that was expressed was something that made Sikhs feel like they too were seen as fellow Americans."Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno8:21 Religious Responses to Boston Bombinghttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/04/19/april-19-2013-religious-responses-to-boston-bombing/15986/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/04/19/april-19-2013-religious-responses-to-boston-bombing/15986/#commentsFri, 19 Apr 2013 21:31:51 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=15986More →

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At Thursday’s interfaith service, local religious leaders prayed for the healing of their city in the wake of the attack.

CARDINAL SEAN O’MALLEY (Archdiocese of Boston): We must overcome the culture of death by promoting a culture of life, a profound respect for each and every human being made in the image and likeness of God. And we must cultivate a desire to give our lives in the service of others.

LAWTON: Within moments of the bombing, clergy and faith-based groups mobilized to do what they could to help. As victims of the bombing were brought to Tufts Medical Center, Interfaith Chaplain Mary Lou Von Euew was on site to offer counseling and prayer. She says one injured woman expressed what many were feeling.

CHAPLAIN MARY LOU VON EUEW (Tufts Medical Center): She said “the hardest thing about this is that some human beings can treat other human beings like this. I just don’t understand it.”

LAWTON: Indeed, Von Euew says, after a tragedy like the bombing, clergy often hear age old questions about the nature of good and evil, suffering and the existence of a loving God.

VON EUEW: You know most of the time people deep down inside aren’t asking for an answer. They’re asking for you to fight and wrestle with the questions with them. We truly believe that God is with us when it happens, so we’re not suffering alone, that we have someone with us who loves us beyond all measure.

LAWTON: Rabbi Yitzhak Korff, Chaplain for the City of Boston, is helping to oversee counseling for first responders.

RABBI YITZHAK KORFF: It’s important that these people understand once they have fulfilled their duty to the citizens, the people they are serving and protecting and saving and making to feel safe and secure, they need to face any feelings that they might be having as well.

LAWTON: He says many of the victims and first responders are still in shock and will deal with theological questions later. Even then, he says, there will be little ultimate satisfaction.

KORFF: The macro answer is, we don’t know God’s plan. I don’t know of anybody that God’s called and said, “Here’s the deal.” And so there’s an unknown. And prayer and meditation can help bring a sense of calm.

LAWTON: Muslims in Boston, and across the US, were quick to condemn the bombing. Imam William Suhaib Webb of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center says all the members of his mosque felt the attack.

IMAM SUHAIB WEBB (Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center): They felt very violated, and they felt the sacredness of the city was violated and that the trust of our populous was violated, so there was a sense of wanting this person to be caught and subjected to justice.

LAWTON: Webb helped organize the interfaith prayer service and urged his congregation to donate blood and find other ways to serve those who are suffering.

WEBB: Reminding people of God’s wisdom then also reminding that we are not allowed to use his wisdom to be placid or inactive. We have to go out and help and work and be positive and stay involved.

TIM HETZNER (Lutheran Church Charities): People many times, all ages, will talk to a dog before they will talk to a person.

LAWTON: The ministry took the specially-trained dogs to Boston hospitals to visit victims and their families, and set up a petting station at a local church. Ministry leaders had also taken the dogs to Newtown, Connecticut after the school shooting.

HETZNER: Whether it’s a bombing or a shooting or divorce or death, whatever happens in life, which life throws stuff at us, they bring the mercy and the compassion of Christ and comfort to people that need to work through whatever it is they’re facing.

LAWTON: Rabbi Korff says the bombing had a profound spiritual impact on the city.

KORFF: We rely on a sense of knowing if I do this then this is what’s going to happen. And so, that’s what gets upset, what upsets the balance in these critical incidents, and that’s what needs to be restored as quickly and as easily as possible.

LAWTON: He and other religious leaders urged the community to come together in grief and then move forward with a new sense of hope. I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We want to talk now via Skype with Reverend Samuel Lloyd, the priest-in-charge at Trinity Episcopal Church, right in Copley Square in Boston, where the bombs went off. We are old friends. Sam, welcome. What can a pastor say to his people at a time like this, a terrible time like this, and what are people saying to you?

REV. SAMUEL LLOYD (Priest-in-Charge, Trinity Church): I think the pastor first needs to acknowledge what a trauma this has been and listen carefully to what people are saying and what I hear a lot is a sense of the fragility of people’s lives and their sense of how vulnerable they’ve been. And so what I have been doing and will continue to do as I’m with my community is to remind them of the core convictions of a power behind all of life that is sustaining us and our faith in a God who goes with us even in the toughest of times and promises always to bring healing beyond the crisis at hand.

ABERNETHY: What about the old questions of where was God in this and how could God have permitted so much suffering? Are you hearing that at all?

LLOYD: I’m not hearing it as much as I did after 9/11. It’s more people’s sense of fragility but when those questions come they always invite an explanation of the fact that we are people who’ve been given extraordinary freedom, we in this human race, and with that comes the enormous possibility of love and delight and also the kind of terror we’ve seen.

ABERNETHY: And also comes the ability to do terrible things.

LLOYD: That’s right. To do unimaginable damage and yet that’s never the last word.

ABERNETHY: People around the country are being told by officials and pastors to pray for the people of Boston. What do you suggest we pray for?

LLOYD: Prayer is an enormously important gift in this time because it binds all of us together as a country. I think it’s a great gift that people are praying for the people of Boston. I’d ask them to pray for courage and strength as we continue to make our way through a time of trauma. I’d ask for them to pray for a sense of our own connectedness to each other. And I’d ask them especially to pray for the magnificent police, law enforcement people, medical people and first attenders who have done an amazing job and continue to be doing crucial work. They are a model for us all.

ABERNETHY: But the thing I’m interested in, that the primary thing that you’ve been hearing is fear and what do you say about how faith can cope with that?

LLOYD: Well one of the first things I say is that fear loves isolation and what we need to do is be in touch with each other so I’m encouraging my community to text and email and call people they know and love and care about, get together as they can because we are reminders to each other of the faith we carry and the trust we’ve known and the love we’ve known through the years that gives us the courage to continue on in what we’re doing. The second thing I do is I try to send them even back to their old scriptures where the psalm for this Sunday is the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want and I’m sending everyone back to be reading that day and night these days to be reminded that there’s someone holding us.

ABERNETHY: Anything good that you see coming out of the response to this terrible thing?

LLOYD: You know, amazing, there’s been immense good. It’s just, just as when the sky is at its darkness we can see the most light. In this dark time, we see the love and care that emerges. I’ve been thinking a lot about what Mr. Rogers said in response to 9/11. Someone asked him what his advice was and he said keep your eyes on the helpers and if you look at the helpers, you’re seeing this a story of enormous courage and compassion and devotion that makes you proud to be a Bostonian and proud to be a human being and grateful for a God of love working through all of this.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2013/04/thumb02-boston-bombing.jpgFaith communities in Boston and beyond should pray “for a sense of our connectedness to each other,” says Rev. Samuel Lloyd, priest-in-charge at Trinity Church in Boston’s Back Bay. In the midst of a terrible trauma, they should be “grateful for a God of love working through all of this.”

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/04/19/april-19-2013-religious-responses-to-boston-bombing/15986/feed/2Boston,Boston marathon bombing,Newtown shooting,September 11,TerrorismFaith communities in Boston and beyond should pray “for a sense of our connectedness to each other,” says Rev. Samuel Lloyd, priest-in-charge at Trinity Church in Boston’s Back Bay. In the midst of a terrible trauma,Faith communities in Boston and beyond should pray “for a sense of our connectedness to each other,” says Rev. Samuel Lloyd, priest-in-charge at Trinity Church in Boston’s Back Bay. In the midst of a terrible trauma, they should be “grateful for a God of love working through all of this.”Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno9:06 Moral Questions After Afghan Massacrehttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/03/16/march-16-2012-moral-questions-after-afghan-massacre/10532/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/03/16/march-16-2012-moral-questions-after-afghan-massacre/10532/#commentsFri, 16 Mar 2012 21:01:28 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=10532More →

KIM LAWTON, host: Religious groups were among those expressing sorrow and condemnation after a US soldier was accused of a shooting spree in Afghanistan that killed 16 villagers, nine of them children. US officials said it was an isolated attack and promised to seek justice. The massacre triggered a new round of anti-US protests. Relations were already tense after American troops burned Qurans at a US military base.

For more on the situation in Afghanistan, joining me is William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Bill, welcome.

WILLIAM GALSTON (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): Good to be back.

LAWTON: How does what happened in Afghanistan this week affect the moral calculus of how the US proceeds there?

GALSTON: In my judgment, this is a really tough one. On the one hand, as the defense secretary said, in the fog of war terrible things happen. To engage in a war is to commit yourself to a process that you can’t entirely control, and events like this unfortunately are almost inevitable. On the other hand, we are pursuing a kind of forward strategy, having our troops not just in the large bases but also interspersed with civilians in the countryside, and that makes it more likely that events of this sort will happen, but unfortunately the United States and its allies have reached the conclusion that this is the only way to prosecute the war with any chance of success. So now we have to choose between our strategy and the inevitable morally troubling consequences of that strategy.

LAWTON: When we first went into Afghanistan it was after 9/11, and there was fairly widespread consensus that we were morally justified to go in, that we had right intentions for going in there. Do things like this erode our moral credibility for that decision?

GALSTON: Well, I think the credibility of the decision, both moral and not, has weakened over time. It’s weakened in part because the war has just ground on for so long, more than a decade now. And it’s weakened in part because our objectives have changed. Some would say broadened. Some would say that they’re no longer achievable, that it was one thing to try to deny a safe haven to Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, and a very a different thing to try to reconstruct the Afghan nation and its central political institutions. People across the political spectrum, right to left, are beginning to wonder whether we’ve bitten off more than we can chew and if we are committed to a mission whose success is dubious now at best because of the way we’ve defined it. Then that makes it even more troubling that we are engaged in strategy and tactics that make events of this sort more likely.

LAWTON: And what moral factors should we take into consideration as we consider an ethical exit from there?

GALSTON: Boy, that’s another tough one, because we have a bunch of people who have worked with us, who have committed themselves to the joint cause. They are now very, very vulnerable, and we have responsibilities to them. We have responsibilities to civilians in areas that are contested between the allied forces and the Taliban, and we have an obligation, it seems to me, to do everything in our power to ensure that the people who have cooperated with us are treated appropriately. Regrettably, we have not discharged that responsibility very well with the Iraqi civilians who worked with us, and many of them are now in fear for their lives.

“People across the political spectrum, right to left, are beginning to wonder if we are committed to a mission whose success is dubious now at best because of the way we’ve defined it,” says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution./wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/03/thumb01-afghanistan.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/03/16/march-16-2012-moral-questions-after-afghan-massacre/10532/feed/2Afghanistan,Just War,September 11,U.S. military,War,William Galston,withdrawal"People across the political spectrum, right to left, are beginning to wonder if we are committed to a mission whose success is dubious now at best because of the way we’ve defined it," says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution."People across the political spectrum, right to left, are beginning to wonder if we are committed to a mission whose success is dubious now at best because of the way we’ve defined it," says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno3:37Robin Lovin: What Went Wrong?http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/12/robin-lovin-what-went-wrong/9506/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/12/robin-lovin-what-went-wrong/9506/#commentsMon, 12 Sep 2011 21:11:23 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=9506More →

]]>These remarks were presented at a 9/11 memorial symposium sponsored by the Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at Southern Methodist University. A version also appeared in the August 23, 2011 issue of The Christian Century.

The striking thing about 9/11 was the sense of unity it produced. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Americans were united. We had the sense that we had all been attacked, that we were all in this together, and that we all knew what we were defending.

References to Pearl Harbor sprang readily to mind. This would be our moment to stand up and stand together, the way our parents and grandparents had come together to defend freedom in the middle of the last century. And because we knew that the values of democracy, and liberty, and personal choice that we were defending are universal human aspirations, we were confident that the rest of the world would stand with us.

At least that was how it seemed at the time. The striking thing, ten years later, is the polarization of our domestic politics and the fragmentation of our global alliances. The historical analogies that now seem most appropriate come not from our times of national unity, but from the decades when we were most divided against ourselves. The news as I hear it from Washington almost every day does not remind me of the “greatest generation” or even of the crusading years of the Cold War. For someone who reads a lot of history, the news from Washington recalls the bitter ideological divisions that gridlocked our national government in the decades before the Civil War. The economic news of the day reminds me of the conflicts of race, class, and ethnicity that marked the end of the Gilded Age.

What went wrong? I think that where we find ourselves today reflects a lack of moral and political realism in our adjustment to the world after 9/11. Our immediate reactions were unifying and effective, but our long-term response has often been dysfunctional.

In some respects, this lack of realism after 9/11 was merely a continuation of the unrealistic way that we were relating to the world before 9/11. Ten years and one day ago, we were still celebrating the tenth anniversary of the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new era of prosperity and global democracy. No one imagined that global capitalism would diminish America’s power in the global economy, rather than expand it; and nobody seemed to be thinking that the end of superpower rivalry might unleash new kinds of threats that had been kept in check by the superpowers trying to watch their own backs. Afghanistan became a terrorist haven because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and 9/11 happened in part at least because we weren’t being sufficiently realistic about the new world situation to see that problem coming.

So we weren’t being realistic about the new global realities before 9/11. We tend to talk about 9/11 as “the day everything changed.” And so it did, in many individual lives and in some ways in our politics as a whole. But that simple phrase that we have heard so often this week slogan masks a more complex reality. William Dobson wrote an essay in Foreign Policy a few years back that he titled, “The day that nothing much changed.” That’s too simple, too; but what Dobson was trying to point out is that the changes that we began to take seriously on 9/11 had begun at least a decade earlier, and we had not begun to think about how the world would be different over the long run because of them.

We still haven’t done that.

Immediately, we responded well to the crisis, and many of the remembrances on this 10th anniversary reflect a kind of nostalgia for the unity, effectiveness, and courage of those first responses. But just as a political realist knows that history does not end, a moral realist has to recognize that courage keeps fear in check. It does not eliminate it. And an effective response does not mean that all of our problems are solved. It means we have gained some breathing space to figure out what the next problem is going to be.

There was courage and unity after 9/11, but there was also fear and suspicion. Fears provoked by the background of the hijackers spilled over into ethnic profiling and helped to fuel a general antagonism toward immigrants. Fear also gave rise to aggressive expressions of Christian nationalism. It was confusing to watch military operations targeted against a terrorist network and its individual leaders, rather than against another state. We were not sure who the enemy was or how we would know when the war was finished, and the early assurances that this was not a war against Islam did not always hold up against the crusading rhetoric that takes over precisely when we are not quite sure what we are doing. We have decided that we like these ultimate choices between good and evil, God and the devil, because they spare us the trouble of understanding the ambiguous realities and interim choices that will have to be made on the way to a different kind of world order than we had before 9/11, and, more importantly, before 1989.

We are still waiting for a strategic vision that can guide us in a multipolar world where states are not the only actors, and where religion and business seem to be competing to determine which of them will fill the vacuum created by the diminished powers of government.

Business and religion each claim a comprehensive solution to the disputes that split communities and set political parties against one another. Business insists that the market can best allocate resources and, over the long run, do the most to increase our wealth, so we should all agree, whatever our individual preferences might be, to live by the judgments of the market. Religion, at least some versions of religion, insists that it has a way of life that transcends cultural change and moral uncertainty, so we should all agree, whatever our individual preferences might be, to live by the judgments of God. Both Islamic and Western religious movements, usually characterized as “fundamentalist,” insist that market forces and the desires they create must not be allowed to shape the lives of the faithful. And business around the world insists that religion must not interfere with freedom, meaning especially the freedom of people to desire what business has to sell and the freedom of business to sell it.

Meanwhile, the wider public, unpersuaded by either religious or economic fundamentalists, is like an individual suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. We are unable to return to the old world we thought we understood, but we cannot tolerate the noise and uncertainty of the new world, either. There are no quick solutions to these problems, and certainly no simple ones. But the future of freedom may depend on whether a traumatized American public can tolerate a higher level of ambiguity, a world of interim solutions and recurrent problems where nothing is as black and white or as red, white, and blue as we would like it to be.

Robin Lovin is the Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University.

Ten years after 9/11, the American public is “like an individual suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,” writes ethicist Robin Lovin. “We are unable to return to the old world we thought we understood, but we cannot tolerate the noise and uncertainty of the new world, either.”/wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/09/thumb01-whatwentwrong911.jpg

]]>KIM LAWTON, correspondent: In New York’s mid-Hudson Valley, Aziz Ahsan, his wife, and three kids are looking at some old photos. These family times are becoming increasingly rare now that the two oldest children are in college. Ahsan says he values these moments more than ever.

AZIZ AHSAN: 9/11 for me was an event that made my relationship with my family stronger, because now that every time I look at my family I am thankful that I am alive. I can touch them, I can feel them, and so it has created a stronger bond.

LAWTON: Ahsan, who is Muslim, was at the World Trade Center on 9/11. He went to the post office there to buy a special new Islamic-themed stamp. Just after he left the plane hit, and he was struck by pieces of the crumbling tower. Hours later, Ahsan was able to make his way home covered in debris, with serious eye injuries.

SHAHZAD AHSAN: I remember walking over to him and wanting to hug him, and he said, “No, don’t. Wait. Don’t get all this stuff on you.” But I just hugged him anyway because I just had to.

LAWTON: Ahsan put his debris-covered clothes in a bag. He says he hasn’t opened it again since he showed them to me nine years ago. He keeps the bag in his garage and hopes to donate the clothes to a 9/11 museum. Shahzad was 13 when the attacks occurred. He told me he felt a backlash from people who blamed all Muslims.

SHAHZAD AHSAN (file interview): I couldn’t understand why people would hate Muslims when they were the victims of the attack as well.

LAWTON: Ahsan decided he and his family should reach out to their community and show a different view of Islam. He got involved in local causes, was appointed to the zoning board of appeals, and successfully ran for president of the school board.

AZIZ AHSAN: When people like myself and others who stood up and made Muslim a household name or became part of the news stories on a regular basis, it made it that much easier for people to realize that Muslims are in our community.

LAWTON: He and his family created and now sell a Muslim identity symbol. It can be placed in a window or on a desk and in its large form, a public park.

AZIZ AHSAN: I just want to make people aware that we are proud to be Americans, and we’re proud to be Muslims.

LAWTON: The Ahsans also got involved with interfaith projects. Shahzad and several Muslim friends worked with Jewish teens on a “Salaam-Shalom” video project to create awareness about anti-religious bigotry and bullying.

SHAHZAD AHSAN: When I was younger my father was really big on trying to get me to understand that this is important. Even what seems like small events are important, because you might be the first Muslim friend someone’s ever had.

LAWTON: Shahzad is now studying political science at the University of Chicago and hopes to find positive ways of portraying American Muslims. His father says that’s the lesson they all learned from 9/11.

AZIZ AHSAN: Those opportunities became much more available after 9/11, and for people like me who participated, got involved, reached out, the community reached back, and it’s important for the rest of the Muslim American community to get more involved. Don’t be shy. Don’t be afraid.

LAWTON: In western Pennsylvania, the small town of Shanksville looks much the same as it did ten years ago before passenger resistance brought down hijacked Flight 93. But this town was indelibly altered on that day.

REV. ROBERT WAY (St. John Lutheran Church, Clearfield, Penn.): The spiritual lesson I think that we probably learned, really, was that we are one, that as a people we are one, that Shanksville people are not different than New York people, aren’t different than Washington, D.C. people, that we’re all the same people.

LAWTON: Lutheran pastor Robert Way had arrived in Shanksville just days before 9/11. It was his first church assignment.

WAY (file interview): I honestly do not believe that the people of this area would have welcomed me as openly as they have already had it not been for the flight. I think it has really framed what my ministry has been but also has opened not only myself to them, but their lives to me.

LAWTON: He says the crash continues to have a spiritual impact for him.

WAY: Probably emboldened more in my spirit, just to understand that evil is a part of our world. Evil can touch even those of us who are in rural western Pennsylvania.

LAWTON: Ten years after 9/11, Way has just arrived at a new assignment at St. John Lutheran Church in Clearfield, about 70 miles away. But he remains heavily involved in Shanksville. He’s an ambassador for the Flight 93 National Memorial and volunteers at the park every week, retelling the story of what happened there, both the tragedy and the heroism.

WAY: I believe the site really is a site of social engagement and calling people into that engagement once again. We have often used the term that the people aboard the plane really stepped up to the plate, and now it’s our turn to step up to the plate, and the people of Shanksville have done that.

LAWTON: At the site of Ground Zero in New York, Greek Orthodox parishioners are frustrated that plans to rebuild St. Nicholas Church have been locked in stalemate.

JIM KOKOTAS (American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association): They were here before the twin towers, were here before the stock exchange was here, and they deserve the right to be rebuilt. The people need a place to worship.

LAWTON: St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was the only house of worship destroyed on 9/11. When the towers fell, the tiny church never stood a chance.

JOHN PITSIKALIS (St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Paris) (file interview): The debris from the south tower literally pancaked our church. You know, it was an unbelievable amount of debris on it.

LAWTON: Only a few remnants were dug out of the rubble: two torn icons, a charred Bible, and some liturgical items, including a twisted candelabra. Most congregation members began worshiping at another Greek Orthodox church in Brooklyn while the church made plans to rebuild. But all rebuilding at Ground Zero is being overseen by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Greek Orthodox officials and the Port Authority had a preliminary agreement to rebuild the church at a different location nearby, but negotiations broke down. The church accused the Port Authority of reneging, and the Port Authority accused the church of making too many demands. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year, and because of it neither church officials nor the Port Authority are commenting. Meanwhile, Orthodox parishioners are trying to ramp up pressure for a resolution. They say a rebuilt St. Nicholas would provide spiritual support for people of all faiths.

KOKOTAS: This is now a sacred ground, and whatever your denomination is you have to respect the fact that many lives were lost. So the role of the church and that relationship with God and oneself plays an even more important role for the people that are going to be coming here, and St. Nicholas could fill that role for these people.

LAWTON: At Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn Heights, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik says the lingering spiritual impact of 9/11 is profound. He was and still is a chaplain for the New York Fire Department and says he’s been especially inspired by the families of the 343 fire fighters who died on 9/11.

RABBI JOSEPH POTASNIK (Congregation Mount Sinai, Brooklyn Heights, NY): So this is a special reminder of many, many special people who are in our midst and who were in our midst.

LAWTON: Potasnik has experienced 9/11’s aftermath on several fronts: as an FDNY chaplain, executive vice-president of the New York Board of Rabbis, and spiritual leader of a synagogue just across the river from Ground Zero. The twin towers loomed large for his congregation, such as during High Holiday services, when they would walk down to the water for the traditional Tashlikh ritual. Eight years ago, Potasnik told us his people had been deeply scarred.

POTASNIK (file interview): You can’t often heal a scar, but you can cover it, and what we try to do, at least in the spiritual world, is teach people how to cover some of those scars so they can continue to live, and life still has meaning and purpose.

LAWTON: I asked him if some healing has now occurred.

POTASNIK: The healing has taken place because we’re inspired by those who have lost so much and yet love so much and want to live so much. I meet families all the time that have a hole in their hearts, and yet they continue to bring comfort to others. Have we healed? Yes. Healed with a hole. It’s never a complete healing, but at least there is that willingness to write a new chapter of life.

LAWTON: Postasnik has seen some new interreligious tensions, such as the controversy over plans to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero. But he says 9/11 has also opened the door for more interfaith cooperation.

POTASNIK: Those who destroyed those buildings, they wanted to separate us. They don’t want to see Muslims, Jews, and Christians and all the other groupings standing with one another. So the best message that we can convey to those that hate us is, “You will not prevent us from being one family.”

LAWTON: The 9/11 tenth anniversary, he says, is stirring up lots of memories and emotions. This photo was taken when Potasnik visited a makeshift shrine for his fellow fire department chaplain, Father Mychal Judge, who died with other first responders on 9/11.

POTASNIK: The day before 9/11 in the year 2001, I was together with Father Mychal Judge. We stood at a rededication of a fire house. He said in life you have to learn to hold on to memory, hold on to the moment, and hold on to one another. That’s what he said the day before he lost his life. Isn’t that what we’re doing on this anniversary? Isn’t this what we are doing every day?

LAWTON: And if we’re not, he says we should be.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

“Have we healed? Yes, healed with a hole. It’s never a complete healing, but at least there a willingness to write a new chapter of life,” says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, a New York Fire Department chaplain./wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/09/thumb03-thenandnow911.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/09/september-9-2011-911-then-and-now/9480/feed/2American Muslims,bigotry,Christian,Greek Orthodox,Ground Zero,Interfaith,Islam,Jewish,Joseph Potasnik,Muslim,sacred space,September 11“Have we healed? Yes, healed with a hole. It’s never a complete healing, but at least there a willingness to write a new chapter of life,” says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, a New York Fire Department chaplain.“Have we healed? Yes, healed with a hole. It’s never a complete healing, but at least there a willingness to write a new chapter of life,” says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, a New York Fire Department chaplain.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno9:47 The Costs of Warhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/09/september-9-2011-the-costs-of-war/9460/
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]]>LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Going into the Iraq war, U.S. military officials described the overwhelming force they intended to employ as “shock and awe.” Now it seems that same phrase could be used to describe the overall cost of that war and the one in Afghanistan and the U.S. engagement in neighboring Pakistan. It’s much greater than predicted by the government, according to a report compiled by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. It’s called the Eisenhower Research Project, codirected by Professors Catherine Lutz and Neta Crawford.

PROFESSOR NETA CRAWFORD (Political Science, Boston University): I’ve been looking at the history of war and its conduct for a long time, and what struck me about these three wars most startlingly was how much we don’t know about the costs.

PROFESSOR CATHERINE LUTZ (Anthropology and International Studies, Brown University): The reasonable estimate is approximately $4 trillion for the war, up to today and including some of the future costs that we’re obligated to pay for veterans care.

SEVERSON: That estimate includes the cost of the fighting that hasn’t ended yet, but it does not include as much as a trillion dollars just for the interest payments on the war debt through 2020. That’s a unique aspect of these wars.

CRAWFORD: Every other war the US has fought historically has been paid for by revenue, either by raising taxes or selling war bonds. In this war, the United States has almost entirely financed it, paid for it by borrowing.

LUTZ: What surprised me most was this idea that wars have such a long tail into the future of negative effects that we pay environmentally, we pay in human suffering, we pay in financially decades into the future.

President George W. Bush in 2003: “My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

SEVERSON: Originally, the Bush Administration projected the Iraq war would be short and cost approximately $60 billion, clearly off the mark, but historically not unusual.

LUTZ: Governments often try to sell wars to the public and they use, at best, a very, very conservative estimate that will seem the most attractive and reasonable to the public. There tends to be an assumption that force will work, and therefore the job will be done in a couple of weeks or a month.

CRAWFORD: That doesn’t usually happen. In fact, it hardly ever happens. You have to really destroy a country to get people to roll over, and in every instance, the duration of war is almost always underestimated.

SEVERSON: To date, more than 6,000 U.S. troops have come home in coffins, although until recently images of the solemn event at Dover Air Force Base have been forbidden. Less well known is the fact that more than 26,000 allied military and security forces, most of them Iraqi or Afghan, have also been killed.

LUTZ: A lot of the information about the war is not available to the American public. For a variety of reasons, the idea that you want to have a sanitized version of the war available for purposes of morale, for the public at large, for the troops.

SEVERSON: Hundreds of aid workers have been killed, others kidnapped. Twenty-three hundred U.S. contractors have died. But what we rarely hear about are the numbers of civilian deaths, and they are considerably greater than military casualties.

CRAWFORD: In Iraq, it’s been about 125,000 people killed, civilians killed. In Afghanistan, the conflict has killed directly about 12,000 to 14,000 civilians.

SEVERSON: The hostilities In Pakistan have actually taken more lives than the war in Afghanistan—about 35,000, including civilians and militants. There, the U.S. military relies increasingly on drone attacks. The cost of this operation is classified.

CRAWFORD: These strikes have killed about 2,000 people. We don’t know exactly how many, and we don’t know exactly how many of those people were insurgent targets. Now this is a secret war, but it’s an open secret.

SEVERSON: Another war statistic is the number of wounded. Among U.S. servicemen alone that number is nearly 100,000, and the wounds are often severe.

LUTZ: This war differs from previous wars in a number of ways, and so there are certain kind of injuries and severity of injury that we did not see in previous wars. Survival rates are higher because of battlefield medicine and other factors.

SEVERSON: The insurgents’ use of IEDs or improvised explosive devices has been a major cause of injuries.

LUTZ: So we have a lot more injuries that are, again, whole body impact rather than just a single bullet kind of injuries, and these kinds of traumatic brain injuries that have such long-term negative effects and often interact with some of the other problems, the PTSD and other injuries that have this major effect on the person.

SEVERSON: It’s the hidden costs or unquantifiable costs of war that keep popping up in the Watson Institute report, which was compiled by 20 academics from around the country—the cost, for instance, to our civil liberties. The report says there has been unprecedented surveillance of American behavior and phone conversations that have been allowed through the Patriot Act, which was enacted to fight terrorism at home.

LUTZ: It is common to wars in general that they have often expanded the power of the government beyond what they were, what those powers were in peacetime, and that those powers are often maintained past the end of the conflict, and so in line with the idea that wars are never over when we think they’re over, that’s one way in which that statement’s true.

SEVERSON: Then there’s the image of the U.S., which has suffered globally, first after the torture pictures from Abu Ghraib, then the reports of the secret prisons and the detention of hundreds of terror suspects at Guantanamo, many of whom were released after several years.

CRAWFORD: It’s tarnished the image of the United States as a country of the rule of law.

LUTZ: For the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, this has been a nightmare decade.

SEVERSON: The report says the psychological effects for the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have been “massive”—depression, post traumatic stress disorder, broken families, targeted victims and collateral damage of a counterinsurgency war.

LUTZ: The number of refugees from these wars have been estimated by the UN at 7.8 million persons in those three countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. And that’s equivalent to the population of Connecticut and Kentucky being forced from their homes.

SEVERSON: The environmental harm is difficult to calculate but significant: damage from spilt fuel, spent munitions, toxic dust, increased rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, which is also showing up in returning troops.

SEVERSON: The report also takes into account what the wars have accomplished—the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the diminished ability of the Taliban, greater rights for women in Afghanistan, the spread of democracy, although Iraq and Afghanistan are listed as two of the world’s most corrupt countries. But like the costs, it will be impossible to measure the benefits until well into the future, and it’s the future that concerns the authors of this report.

LUTZ: The data is out there, but it’s very difficult to access. In some cases it’s not there at all. We need to know what those data are for past conflicts in order to try and project forward to other conflicts. That’s how a democratic society should operate is with full information about what public policy decisions are being made and who’s being asked to pay what. These have been costs that have also been born very unevenly, so the people who are paying the costs, military families, veterans, civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan—those people deserve to have their story told.

SEVERSON: Benjamin Franklin is quoted as having said, “Wars are not paid for in wartime. The bill comes later.” The Watson Institute report says the bills for these wars will keep coming in for as long as 40 years later.

For Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, this is Lucky Severson in Washington.

“The people who are paying the costs, military families, veterans, civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—those people deserve to have their story told,” says Professor Catherine Lutz of Brown University./wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/09/thumb01-costsofwar.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/09/september-9-2011-the-costs-of-war/9460/feed/6Abu Ghraib,Afghanistan,Debt,economics,Enhanced Interrogation,George W. Bush,Iraq,military,Pakistan,Patriot Act,PTSD,September 11“The people who are paying the costs, military families, veterans, civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—those people deserve to have their story told,” says Professor Catherine Lutz of Brown University.“The people who are paying the costs, military families, veterans, civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—those people deserve to have their story told,” says Professor Catherine Lutz of Brown University.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno9:01Ten Years Later: Nicholas Wolterstorffhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/09/ten-years-later-nicholas-wolterstorff/9481/
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]]>Watch excerpts from our interview about 9/11 with Nicholas Wolterstorff, the Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University and a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He gave the keynote lecture at a recent conference on “Liberty and Tolerance in an Age of Religious Conflict” commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and he spoke with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly about religious tolerance, justice, Muslim-Christian relations, and living in a state of perpetual war.
/wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/09/thumb02-wolterstorff.jpg“You’re not tolerant,” says this Christian philosopher, “if you’re indifferent. You’re tolerant if you disapprove of the other person’s religion but put up with it nonetheless.”

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/09/ten-years-later-nicholas-wolterstorff/9481/feed/0Christianity,enemy,Evangelicals,Evil,image of God,Interfaith Dialogue,Islam,Just War,Love,Moral issues,Muslims,Nicholas Wolterstorff“You’re not tolerant,” says this Christian philosopher, “if you're indifferent. You're tolerant if you disapprove of the other person's religion but put up with it nonetheless."“You’re not tolerant,” says this Christian philosopher, “if you're indifferent. You're tolerant if you disapprove of the other person's religion but put up with it nonetheless."Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno19:58